


Unexpected

by Mousekins



Category: Mother 1 | EarthBound Zero | EarthBound Beginnings, Mother 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushuu | EarthBound, Mother 3
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Two good boys take a trip to a hotspring and Ninten confesses he likes Claus, a little bit of angst mentions but it's mostly fluff, confession fic, giftfic, kind of a slowish build up to the actual confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 22:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18882940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mousekins/pseuds/Mousekins
Summary: Claus didn't know what he expected that morning when Ninten told him they needed to go to the hot springs, but he's pretty sure that a confession wasn't one of them.





	Unexpected

Claus didn’t know what to expect when Ninten had approached him that morning, claiming that he’d been talking to his twin brother and suggesting that they should go to the hot spring together. Now, don’t get him wrong, he loves the hot springs as much as the next guy, but the fact that Ninten was so forward about it to him struck him as a little _odd_ _._  
  


Ninten’s the type of person who isn’t entirely forward with what he wants, he’ll shuffle around the subject for a little bit, stare at something for a prolonged amount of time, and _then_ admit that he’d been thinking of something. That didn’t mean that Ninten wasn’t boisterous or couldn’t wholeheartedly declare if he was after something, but growing up with two younger sisters had made him a little careful of what he was saying.  
  


After all, anything he said around his sisters would inevitably be repeated by them. Ninten wanted to be a good big brother, and Claus can wholeheartedly sympathise with that feeling. He’d mentioned to Ninten before that he’d only been so energetic and head-first because he wanted to be strong for Lucas, so that Lucas didn’t have to be so scared and frail all the time. Turns out all he really needed to do was have a near-fatal accident for Lucas to grow more of his spine.  
  


The one thing Claus didn’t expect to be doing at a hot spring at approximately ten in the morning was having a strange kind of heart-to-heart with a boy who had too many troubles on his mind. Usually the heart-to-heart talks came at two a.m. while Lucas was downstairs reading and Ness had long since drifted off. They worked like clockwork in that sense, things were always predictable between them, exceptions withstanding, so it was easy enough to fall into comfortable routine.  
  
Get up, shower, brush teeth, get dressed, have breakfast, and then do whatever was on the agenda for that day. In the evenings they’d have their lunch, and at 10 o’clock Ness was ready to go to sleep and Lucas would bid him a very shy, very obvious ‘I have a crush on you’ goodnight, to which he would then hide himself in his stack of books until the early hours.  
  


As Ninten talks to him, about Gigue, about his world almost ending, about how he’d found his love of songs through his journey, about his friends and his family, Claus can’t stop the soft homesickness he feels. Usually homesickness is Ness’ big thing; he calls his mother every other day to check up on her and his sister, and Claus at least has Lucas and Flint. Ninten’s voice shakes quietly as he admits that maybe saving the world had taken a soft toll on him, and that he’d been feeling far more exhausted for far less reason.  
  


Ah, that explains the odd timing of his vent.  
  


Claus doesn’t say anything as he pulls the other into the water, letting the heat course through him as he relaxes against the side of the spring. Ninten sighs, though the gentle upturning of his eyebrows and the misty appearance of his eyes is a sign of something Claus knows all too well. Lucas had pulled that face so many times the social cue had been embedded into the backs of his eyelids. So Claus does the instinctive thing and wraps an arm over Ninten’s shoulder.  
  


With a heavy heart, he hears the gentle beginnings of a soft sob. The quick inhalation of air, the burying of Ninten’s face in his clavicle, the tentative shuffling closer so that he couldn’t see his mouth turn downwards into a frown, and the shame-filled sniffling that came with it. He hears the soft apology for crying, and Claus rubs over his shoulder and tells him it’s fine.  
  


Because it _is_ fine. Ninten’s allowed to cry, he shouldn’t feel like he has to bottle up so much, and if there was one lesson that he’d let Ness parade to the world, it was that crying was one of the best feelings—he stifles a smile at remembering Lucas telling him to tell that fact to his eight-year-old self, and Ness laughing because he never knew Lucas was such a crybaby as a kid.  
  


“You’re kind of lucky.” Claus says, and Ninten looks at him incredulously, but before he can refute the fact that he definitely _isn’t lucky_ , Claus starts talking again. “How many 12 year olds would have dreamed to have said they’d gone on a world-saving adventure and subdued an alien?”  
  


Even with red eyes and obvious sniffles, Ninten laughs. Claus feels his heart jump at the gentle noise, muffled through the back of his hand as the teen covers his face in his own arm. In a way, he supposes Ninten and Ness share the same guilty conscious of their own butterfly effects, and in a way they’d both forgiven each other for what happened, but they still couldn’t quite forgive themselves.  
  


Claus may be strong-headed and all-action-barely-any-thought, but he’s not an idiot. Lucas is definitely the more emotionally available between them both, but trauma does that to people. Trauma had changed him, too. Ninten refuses to believe that he used to be an energetic upbeat kid who had once pushed his brother into a lake and got grounded, he refuses to believe that he’d been so relentless to Lucas when they were kids, and after a small list of pushing Lucas over and peer pressuring him into doing outrageous things, Ninten says he suddenly understands why Lucas had cried so much.  
  


“You’re telling me...”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“That you convinced your brother, Lucas, at eight years old...”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“To sprint into a dinosaur creature, and fully believed neither of you would get impromptu _eaten_ or killed?”  
  
“Pretty much.”  
  


Ninten laughs at him, and Claus finds himself smiling. At least Ninten wasn’t crying any more and in his books, that’s totally a win. He tells Ninten that Dragos are actually the most docile creatures in the world despite their appearance, and that they rarely attacked anyone. He’s pretty sure he remembers Lucas telling him that he’d trained the Dragos in secret to attack people after the incident involving their mother, but he still doesn’t believe Lucas could do something like that.  
  
  
Lucas is gentle at heart. He can be sassy and he can give good quips, but the idea of him actively harming something or inadvertently killing somebody just doesn’t click with him. It makes Claus feel a strange kind of discomfort, so he blocks the mental image of what that would look like out of his mind, and focuses on the fact that Ninten’s still half-cuddled under his arm.  
  


His eyes are averted, his fingers are playing with themselves and his eyebrows are knit together. Ninten’s dodging around a subject in his mind again, and Claus knows better than to try and prompt him to say it. Pressuring the other only made him retreat more and everyone had found that out the hard way. Claus remembers Ninten’s thick shield and the way he’d vanished from their sight when they’d tried to get him to _just say it already_ , and they’d quickly picked up on never to do _that_ again.  
  


So he closes his eyes, allowing himself to relax in the spring proper, the warmth rejuvenating him and easing him of his weariness. He feels a soft prodding at his arm, and he opens his eyes to see Ninten looking at him, his mouth curved into a soft smile and a gentle look on his face. Claus goes to remove his arm from around Ninten’s shoulder, concerned that maybe the other was prodding it to remove it, but the grip on his wrist before he can certainly tells him otherwise.  
  


“I don’t know how to express my thoughts right now.” Ninten tells him, rather plainly, so Claus nods. They’d told Ninten after the incident that if he was struggling to say something then he should tell them he doesn’t know how to say it, to communicate himself rather than shy away or beat around it, and Claus feels a little proud that Ninten had been so direct about his thoughts for once.  
  


“Is it important?” Indirect questions often helped Ninten put his thoughts into words, and the gentle humming and soft gnawing of his lip tells Claus that yes, _it’s very important_ . So Claus lets Ninten take his time, he wiggles his toes in the water as Ninten’s breathing evens out while he thinks. Eventually, there’s a long inhale before he speaks up again.  
  


“Promise we’ll always be friends?”  
  


“You could become the personification of evil itself and I’d still find a way to enjoy your company, Ninten.” The worried expression on Ninten’s face melts away into a warm smile, and Claus finds his heart doing little leaps again. There’s a bubbling of nerves in his stomach, he regrets lacing his arm over the other’s shoulder, the closeness is slowly frazzling away at his thoughts and he can’t possibly imagine what Ninten was so worked up over.  
  


And then he speaks.  
  


“For a while now I’ve been confused about how I feel. At first it was just a really deep admiration. You’re always so strong, so thoughtful, you have the ability to make me feel better just by talking, and I wanted to be like that, too.” There’s a pause, Ninten’s voice is shaking under the weight of just what he was saying.  
  


Claus likes to think he’s pretty smart, he can see what’s happening from a mile away. He can see the little flashes of concern and hope in Ninten’s eyes, he can see the little glances, the nervous shuffling, the way his gaze flicks back towards him after his nerves settle. Ninten’s gnawing on his lip again, and Claus swallows down the excitement in his throat. Ninten needed to speak his whole thought, jumping the gun wouldn’t do either of them any good, and giving Ninten the opportunity to sort through his feelings aloud would help him in the long run.  
  


He can’t finish Ninten’s sentences for him. He needed this.  
  


“And then after a while I started to notice more things about you, how you lick over your lips when you’re thinking about something, how calloused your hands are, and I started to feel ashamed of liking you as more than a friend.” Ninten inhales deeply, the shaking in his voice only growing stronger, before he exhales heavily and closes his eyes.  
  


“I think I’m starting to accept those feelings.” Another pause. Claus feels his chest tighten as Ninten’s gaze meets his own, a nervous smile twitching up on his lips as he shuffles a little closer to his side, the heat of the bath barely noticeable with just how _warm_ Ninten is against his side. He’s trying not to let his thudding heartbeat deafen Ninten’s confession, and after several little moments of silence, Ninten’s hand clasps around his own.  
  


“I’m in love with you.”  
  


It’s like the world had paused around him, if only for a split second as his mind processes through the words, and as he feels Ninten pull away from him slightly and open his mouth to quickly retract what he’d said, Claus raises his hand. Ninten closes his mouth and leans back into him. There’s a mutual understanding that they need a moment to process the levity of the words Ninten had just said. It wasn’t a simple clean-cut situation: For starters Ninten had just done two things in one very swift motion.  
  


He’d outed himself from his own closet, and admitted that Claus was the cause of said outing. Even if Claus _didn’t_ return his feelings, he’d still be left with the knowledge that his best friend is gay, and that’s a very serious weight to hold. Ninten had placed a lot of trust in his hands by confessing to him, and Claus wants to make sure his response is as genuine as he can make it.  
  


Though he supposes a simple ‘fuck yeah I love you too let’s make out’ would also work for Ninten, but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to reciprocate like that after Ninten had worked so hard to spill out his heart on a platter. So he stretches and leans further back before sitting up properly, the cold air around them tickling at his relieved, burning flesh. He allows a moment before he removes his arm from around Ninten’s shoulder, a flash of hurt registering in his irises before Claus squeezes his hand.  
  


“I wanted to come up with this big speech like you did, but I feel like being direct suits me more.” Claus smiles, and Ninten inclines his head, that hope in his eyes shimmering further forward. “It’s not easy to confess to somebody, and I’m realising just how difficult it is to tell you that I like you back.” His heart leaps into his throat as the cues appear one by one on Ninten’s face, the confusion, the sudden widening of his eyes, the sparkle that intensifies, the little trickles of psychic energy, his mouth widening into a huge grin, his eyebrows raising and the little gasp as the information processes.  
  


Comfortable silence fills the space as Ninten’s arms wrap around his chest, the moisture from the steam causing his hair to stick to his face as his face buries into his neck. Claus relaxes into the hold, squeezing Ninten softly as the water quietly moves around them. For a moment he feels the little ebbings of shell shock, Ninten had confessed to him, they had confessed to each other, and the elation causes Claus to squeeze Ninten a little tighter.  
  


Ninten laughs again, and the sound only makes Claus want to nuzzle him and kiss him and make him laugh more. He’s always loved the sound of Ninten’s laughter, second only to his brothers, but he’s biased about Lucas because his laughter used to be so rare. Claus had learned to appreciate the little moments of joy between himself and those he cherished.  
  


They reluctantly part from their cuddle, Ninten whining softly that he wanted to hug him more, but he was getting too cold being out of the water. Claus smiles widely at his newfound boyfriend, and as he looks into the amber eyes of the boy next to him, he feels a lightness in his chest.  
  


“Ninten?” His voice is far softer than what he meant for, but Ninten hums in response anyway. Claus had never been one for hesitation, from the moment he was born to the moment he was revived, he had always been head-first, a go-getter, running ahead of Lucas and glancing back every so often when he heard his brother fall.  
  


So the soft clenching in his chest is a strange, almost pleasant feeling. He lets a lazy smile rest on his lips as he leans a little closer to the other, locking their fingers together and searching into those beautiful amber eyes.  
  


“Can I kiss you?” Ninten freezes up on the spot and Claus has to hold back a laugh, the poor guy looked like a deer in headlights before his shoulders sag, internally giving up and softly nodding to give him approval. He isn’t sure if Ninten’s red face is because of the heat of the hot spring or his sudden request, but regardless of its cause, the fluster gives Ninten twice the cute factor. Ninten’s already cute without it, a statement many people would often call him out for, and he’s fairly certain Ninten’s sick of people calling him adorable.  
  


Claus finds himself leaning forward, a nervous chuckle bubbling from Ninten as their faces are barely inches away, and with a small push of bravery, Claus pushes their lips together softly. A little sparkle of energy worms its way into his stomach, warming his insides and tingling along his lips, a little sigh escaping them both as their lips linger against each other’s for seemingly only seconds before they part.  
  


The soft look on Ninten’s face had his heart performing loops in his chest.  
  


He laughs softly as Ninten buries his face into his neck, hiding his totally red face from view, and for somebody who hated being called cute, he sure was synonymous with the word. Claus allows himself to rub at Ninten’s back, tracing lines across his shoulders and down his spine, earning a little pleased sigh from the thoroughly flustered boy.  
  


“We should probably get back to the others before they think we’ve drowned or something.”  
  


Ninten laughs at him, lightly hitting his chest and detangling himself from his arms to go and get dressed. Claus feels a lopsided grin form on his face as he follows his boyfriend back into the locker rooms to get dressed, and he can’t help the swelling of happiness in his chest when Ninten grins right back at him.  
  


For once, he’s glad for Ninten’s strange unpredictability and his odd struggle with words.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for notsodaily-ninten on tumblr because she drew me dragon Ninten from my 'shattered scales and broken wings' fic, and as it stands, anybody who draws me one of my dragon boys essentially owns my soul. So hey ho I hope you enjoyed it because I had a blast writing this.
> 
> MegaStarStrike proof-read it for me because she has a better grasp on grammar than I do and you should read her fics too, she's a good bean and I love her even if she thinks that's gross.
> 
> The doc title is: "Claus and Ninten get a little steamy but in a clean way", you're welcome.


End file.
